


a heart's a heavy burden

by oscarisaac



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:21:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29433066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscarisaac/pseuds/oscarisaac
Summary: Twenty years after the end of the war, Suzaku runs into Lelouch.
Relationships: Kururugi Suzaku/Lelouch Lamperouge | Lelouch vi Britannia
Comments: 16
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> BEFORE YOU READ:  
> \- the M rating is there because of a significant deal of canon-typical violence (nothing more than that, but also not much less), and also because there's a lot of talk of grief and murder. Please take into consideration that it IS entirely canon-compliant although it does have a happy ending. I don't think it ever gets too dark but it can be intense  
> \- if eating is a sensitive topic for you then I suggest you thread carefully, as characters in this fic often share meals!
> 
> the fic has been entirely planned out and I meant to post it all in one go once I finished writing, but it was getting too long not to be divided into chapters so I decided to start posting it, and Valentine's Day sounded like a good start. Hoping I don't regret this! I do, like, study 9 hours a day, so updates might be slow. encouragements would be appreciated. also English is not my first language so go easy on me please
> 
> title is the greatest romantic line ever written, from my favorite movie howl's moving castle

Lelouch’s unwelcome gift to Suzaku - the spell he cast on him that fateful day in the clear - fades shortly after his death. 

Suzaku doesn’t find out until eleven years later.

It’s funny when you think about it, that he lives with the memory of Lelouch’s mark on him for longer than he’s had it - for longer than he’s  _ known  _ him. He carries the burden of his Geass for more like a decade without realizing it’s already gone much like Sisyphus must be carrying out his eternal task: resigned, unforgiving, and most importantly irate at the affection he feels for the boulder he’s been rolling up the hill for all of time itself. If Sisyphus were offered the chance to leave it all behind, would he take it? Or would he choose to keep going until, at long last, he’s finally secured that goddamn rock on top of the fucking precipice?

So it goes: the years following the end of the war are hectic, delicate, and full of peril as the rapid disbandment of the Britannian Empire marks the beginning of a time of political instability. Lelouch left the world to fend for itself, confident that joy would rise from his own ashes, but the world is much more complicated than he believed it to be. He had this stupid belief, Lelouch, that every problem would be fixed once the villain was gone. But his death proves to be more like the end of a long-winded prologue. 

The first chapter sees the decrepit Britannia fall under its own weight, with its capital city annihilated and its peoples reclaiming their independence. Meetings to attend, pacts to draw up, treaties to sign, but the Second Prince feels the country, and Princess Cornelia refuses to take the helm, and the rest of the rightful heirs are dead. It’s Nunnally Lamperouge who offers herself up, just as she did during the war.

She spends a good part of a decade flying left and right - so poised, kind and respected, seemingly born for this role that in truth was thrust upon her by her siblings, in one way or another: there is the place Euphemia left vacant, the spotlight Cornelia put her under, the role Lelouch himself compelled her to take. When the war ends, she’s only fifteen. She shouldn’t have to do this, there is no right world in which she does this, yet she ends up doing most of her schoolwork on folding airplane tables, and eight years later she gets a law degree having barely walked the halls of her university and she’s asked to give a speech in front of classmates she’s never borrowed pens from or shared vending machine coffee with. Nobody knows what she would have chosen for herself had the situation been different. Nobody asks. She’s never heard complaining about losing her teenage years for the sake of international stability. Only Zero, her faithful chaperone, is privy to the small outbursts of annoyance that surface from time to time, when even gentle Nunnally Lamperouge gets pissy at the world.

It’s only about two years after the end of the war that Nunnally finds the time to come back to Tokyo and pay Kallen a visit. Her old friend is living in a small apartment in the University District, and as Suzaku walks Nunnally up to her building he idly wonders how many of those college students were members of the Black Knights.

When Kallen sees him on her doorstep behind Nunnally, her smile turns into a grimace. She recovers her footing in the matter of a second, tearing her eyes away from him and sparing a kind greeting to Nunnally, but her initial bout of anger was unmistakable.

“Hello, Nunnally,” she says. “Today is such a lovely day, how about we take it outside?”

She’s a good actress. But there’s a primness in the light tone of her question that makes Suzaku shiver. Takes one to know one: he recognizes the meek mannerisms of Kallen Stadtfelt, the personality she adopted at Ashford in order to protect her true identity. As he wheels Nunnally back into the corridor toward the elevator, he doesn’t take his eyes off her, but Kallen adamantly avoids looking back. She turns around, too, leaving the food ajar while she grabs her wallet and keys and she puts on a pair of shoes. He catches a glimpse of her kitchen, where the table is laid with a colorful tablecloth. She bought a box of pastries, but she’ll let her efforts go to waste rather than welcoming Zero into her home.

She leads them to a nearby park, where she offers to buy them hot chocolate from a street vendor. Suzaku doesn’t explicitly refuse but doesn’t accept either, and she makes no effort to get him a cup. It’s the first week of winter, and he feels a pang of longing for something warm to drink. But he shouldn’t indulge in these sorts of things, and he can’t take off his mask anyway. 

So he straightens his back and grips Nunally’s wheelchair tighter, falling back into his comfortable nothingness. He wills the perfume of cocoa out of his mind and thinks: that kid’s toy might be a weapon; that woman’s purse might conceal a bomb; Kallen may have had an ill motive for inviting Nunnally to her house. He doesn’t  _ believe  _ that, of course, but there is no place for Kururugi Suzaku’s beliefs in this world: there’s only the hard set of Kallen’s shoulders, her free hand buried in her pocket, and the hot chocolate she’s not actually drinking. She holds the paper cup in front of her mouth and chews on her lip as if the intoxicating smell awoke no desire in her.

Nunnally, on the other hand, takes little sips, careful not to burn her tongue. She seems content at wandering through the park and observing the passerby. She doesn’t push for conversation. If she’s contrite at having upset her friend, she still doesn’t offer to send Suzaku away. She simply waits for Kallen to collect her thoughts.

“Please forgive me for being so quiet, Nunnally” Kallen indeed says after some time.

“I don’t mind. I’m just happy to be here with you today.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“It has. I hope you can still consider me your friend, though.”

“Of course I do!”

Suzaku flinches as Kallen takes her hand out of her pocket - what’s he expecting, really? She just squeezes Nunnally’s shoulder.

“I just wasn’t expecting to see you both.”

“He always accompanies me,” Nunnally reminds her patiently.

“I know. I just didn’t expect to see him,” she repeats. Though her tone is calm, when her gaze darts to him it’s as spirited as he remembered - polite, phony Britannian girl shoved aside by the real Kallen Kōzuki. “I know who you are,” she tells him. A hard edge to her voice. She’s reserving him no friendliness.

“So you do,” Kallen says, pensive. “You must have figured out the truth, then.”

The flash of a grimace. “Ah. I think I have. Many things wouldn’t add up otherwise, would they? Your brother was the Demon Emperor yet you still love him. Zero betrayed him yet you still trust him. I guess things are never as they seem.”

“Then you understand that he means us no harm.”

They speak as if he weren’t there. In a way, he isn’t.

“I understand, but it’s precisely because things are complicated that…” Instead of completing the sentence she hastily swallows her cocoa, distressed. “He killed my friend when he was just a kid.”

It’s Nunnally who reaches for her, now. She slips her hand in Kallen’s palm and clutches it.

“I’m sorry,” she says, speaking in Suzaku’s stead.

“Does he ever talk?” Kallen asks.

The suddenness of her question makes Nunnally’s sweet smile drop ever-so-slightly.

“Sometimes. Never in public,” she replies, and Suzaku’s heart breaks for her. But of course he doesn’t talk. He can’t give himself a voice. At the very least, it’s too early for it.

He doesn’t know it, but the magic within him is already fading.

Nunnally is twenty-five - a kid still, really - when she’s trusted with the responsibility of being the Britannian Ambassador to Japan. It was about time she came home for good. 

Zero, as always, tags along. He’s spent the last ten years tagging along - and making sure that she’s not hurt, because no one better represents the struggle for a peaceful future than Nunnally Lamperouge, and because they’d have to murder him again for him to leave his sister’s side knowing that it might be the last time he sees her.

They live together, technically, in the embassy complex.  _ Technically  _ because while she shares her life with him, he doesn’t take off his mask unless he’s alone in his room. She needs a better friend, better guidance, but all he can offer is his unconditional protection and nothing more, because he’s still clinging to the idea that he must have no identity but Zero’s. It’s a lie, and the truth is that he never succeeded at burying his old self. But it’s a lie whose name he refuses to speak.

Three years later, Nunnally is caught in an armed conflict that leads Suzaku to discover that Lelouch’s Geass has left him - tiptoed away in the middle of the night without a kiss goodbye.

They’re surveying a disused military camp when it happens. It’s a private affair, three civilians escorted by Zero and four other members of the Ambassador’s personal guide; it should be a safe situation, but the area is desolate and it still reeks of war and it sets Suzaku on edge from the very beginning. Although the attempts on Nunnally’s life have sparsed out with time - Zero’s presence has proven to be a good deterrent - years of fighting have instilled indelible suspicion in him. He’s got one of the most influential figures of the centuries in his care, so he’ll be damned if he’s not mistrustful of everything.

Indeed, it’s his skepticism that saves them. They’re expecting the arrival of a team of experts who’ll survey the land and advise them on how to repurpose it, but when two helicopters approach the camp and comm him the correct permission codes, Suzaku still decides to usher Nunnally and the other civilians into the barracks. 

Next thing he knows, they’re being shot from above. One of the choppers targets their transport, trapping them in the camp. Judging by their knowledge of procedures and by their professional equipment, it’s nothing Suzaku hasn’t seen before. Nowadays, Britannia is a small nation spread on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, and for the past thirteen years Nunnally has been blamed for the fall of the mighty Empire and for the dissolution of its military forces. Former members of the army often still have the resources to carry out their pathetic attacks, but for all their tactics and equipment and stolen secrets they always underestimate Zero. In fact, he won this fight the moment he made Nunnally take cover, depriving them of the chance for a surprise attack.

As long as he keeps her moving in the network of buildings, he can force the adversary to come down and search for her; and once they’re out of their choppers, leaving them with minimal protection to carry out their offense, Suzaku has already secured Nunnally’s way out. His inspection of the camp has told him exactly how to map a route from the barrack to the helicopters. All he needs to do is hold his ground while his team moves to neutralize the helicopters, and then he can lead the civilians to safety.

He stays behind, covering their backs and buying them time to climb aboard as they’re out in the open. He’d remain alone on land until he’s taken them all out or died trying, but he knows that at the very last moment Lelouch’s stupid wish will make him turn his back to the enemy and climb into the helicopter right as it’s about to take off, even at the risk of being shot while he’s exposed. 

He sees the moment when it should happen: the chopper is rising from the ground, he’s responding to enemy fire, and if he made a run for it he’d still make it.  _ You stubborn fool,  _ shouts Lelouch.  _ Live! _ This time, though, it’s not a command. It’s only a memory. Suzaku sees the moment, he  _ feels  _ it, except–nothing happens.

It’s sheer shock that makes him drop his defenses and break for it. He tumbles into the helicopter knowing that it wasn’t Lelouch who saved his life.

That night, back in their home in Tokyo, he tells Nunnally about it. If asked why he’s opening up to her, he wouldn’t know what to answer. It may be a rare sense of vulnerability that makes him do it, a sense of loneliness he hasn’t felt in a long time. Whatever the reason, it’s a miscalculation, as she doesn’t take it well. How could she? It’s an awkward conversation.  _ I ran for my life today but don’t worry, it won’t happen again, I’m finally allowed to die heroically for you. _ That’s the gist of it. He’s lost a friend  _ twice, _ and now he runs to another for a sweet drop of comfort, but not four weeks have passed that she asks for his resignation as a member of her personal guard.

In the home they share, beautiful in the soft glow of their living room lamp, with an art history book on her lap and a violet cotton dress, she asks him to face her. He kneels on the floor - a lovely, domestic parody of his own knighting. She puts her hand on his mask and does something he’d have never expected: she takes it off. Her movements are neither quick nor furtive - she takes her time, in fact, smiling, as radiant as ever, and giving him plenty of room to stop her. He doesn’t. He feels paralyzed. 

She places the mask on the sofa, there in the crook between the cushion and armrest, black and round like a sleeping cat.  _ If Sisyphus… _

When she brushes the hair on his forehead, with nothing but love in each stroke of her fingers, he lets out a sob. No one has touched him in thirteen years. It almost  _ hurts. _

“Suzaku. Do you know what I’m about to say?”

He’d like to tell her that he has no idea. That she shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t have broken his course so easily and in such an irremediable way. But he’s too busy wiping away the tears. They’ve never looked into each other’s eyes without Zero’s mask between them, and when they finally do, he knows he’s already lost the battle. She’s so beautiful, and she’s about to be just as cruel as her brother was.

“I see, now, that I can’t keep you tied to me forever,” she whispers.

“You could,” is all he finds the strength to say. She could. Nobody’s forcing her not to tighten the leash around his throat and never let him go.  _ You could.  _ It seems that in those thirteen years of self-annihilation he’s forgotten the art of debate.

“You’re like a brother to me and I don’t know what I wouldn’t have done all these years without you. But it kills me to see you in such pain. Please, Suzaku, you need to stop being a ghost.”

He can’t argue with her - has never been able to win a debate with either Lamperouge sibling. Nor to resist their pleas.

At thirty-one years old, Zero is laid to rest. In his stead emerges a man called Minami Akihiko, who rents a one-bedroom apartment in the Tokyo area, goes grocery shopping on Tuesday and Friday, and doesn’t have cable TV. In an effort to muddy the waters, he goes from being an undocumented child of the war named Ahab to a man named Ito Shuichi to one called Miyamoto to, finally, Akihiko. 

For some time after demoting him, Nunnally keeps employing secret service agents to play the role of Zero both for her public appearances and to keep up the charade in the embassy, but soon she bids goodbye to him altogether. However, she allows Suzaku to keep working at the embassy: that’s how the former  _ Lancelot _ devicer ends up handling bills and maintenance paperwork in a crowded office on the ground floor of the building. He doesn’t mind. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t work for her. His pact with Lelouch was that he’d spend the rest of his life as her faceless knight, so he’s not sure where that leaves him, that she doesn’t want him to keep his promise anymore.

Minami Akihiko is tidy, quiet, and a little too lonely. He maintains rigid control over himself and performs all of his tasks with the level of efficiency he was taught in the military. He discovers new, exciting ways to repress himself, such as finding the perfect strict routine that allows no space for entertainment or friendship. He sees Nunnally from time to time, thanks to her habit of inviting her employees over for tea, and that’s about it as far as friendship goes. 

At her request, however, he tries to stop being a ghost. He wasn’t good at being dead and now he feels unfit for life, and he’s still chasing a redemption that hasn’t yet come, but she’s like a sister to him, so he can’t ignore the plea she made out of love. Even though every part of him is screaming to run in the opposite direction, he breaks his promise to Lelouch for her sake.

On a fine October morning he walks right up to Kallen’s door, alone and without Zero's mask. 

She’s moved since the last time he saw her; she now lives in a quint, one-story house in a suburban neighborhood. She opens the door wearing a loose shirt and jeans, and glasses, too, big and rectangular and black-rimmed. Her sleek hair shines under the sunlight.

She doesn’t recognize him, but he didn’t expect her to. Truth be told, he probably wouldn’t recognize her either if he saw her walking down the street. It’s been a long time, and they were so young back then.

Instead of introducing himself, he says: “Would you like to accompany me to his grave?”

Uncomprehending, dismayed, yet unable to turn away from the edge of the chasm that just opened under her feet, she braces herself on the doorframe and stares at him with the abyss of her gaze in tumult until he lifts his hand and places two fingers under his eyes, softly.  _ Geass. _ Such delicacy in his touch, such violence in the way he got close to Lelouch - the last time and the first time, and all the times in-between.

She clenches her jaw. She must have understood.

“I’ll come,” she simply says. She’s Kallen Kōzuki, today. No time for pretenses, or maybe she’s outgrown the need for a shell.

She gives him a once-over, still quite disbelieving - who  _ is _ this muscular man with buzzed hair who showed up on her doorstep out of the blue, is he really Suzaku? But still she turns to grab her coat and keys and put on a pair of trekking boots.

“It’ll take a while,” he warns her as he holds the garden gate open. It will be a two-hour train ride, and then they’ll have to take the bus.

“It’s fine. Where’s this place?”

“In the countryside. Have you ever been to the Kururugi shrine?”

That startles her. “You buried him in your family tomb?”

He shakes his head. “In the forest behind it. Nunnally and I chose that place because it’s where we used to play together as children. My relatives still live nearby, but nobody goes into that part of the property anymore, so we won’t risk being seen.”

“What if someone does?”

“Would it make a difference?”

“Yes? You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Then what can I do? I might as well start making them believe in ghosts.” After receiving an ice-cold glare from her, he adds gently: “They haven’t seen me in a long time, so I doubt they would recognize my face. At worst, we’ll have to make a run for it.”

She nods. She doesn’t look too concerned about the breaking and entering part. She looks straight ahead as she walks, her chin high, comfortable with herself. Her coat is as blue as the autumn sky, and as bright as she is. He wonders how it feels, to  _ be _ yourself so fully.

“How come you’re showing it, by the way? Your face.”

“Zero was fired,” is his cour reply.

She finds this amusing. “I can work with that,” she says. She's grinning, and he’s got to admit that it’s pretty funny: even the embodiment of justice can be fired.

The next time she speaks to him, the city is disappearing past the train windows. Suzaku is regretting his choice of seat, because the sun is hitting his eyes. She observes him for a long time, and maybe it’s seeing the familiar bright green of his eyes that makes her break the silence.

“So, Suzaku–”

“It’s Akihiko, now. My first name.”

“Okay. Akihiko. What do you do?”

“I work at the Britannian embassy.”

“Not unexpected.”

“I guess not.”

“Though I’m surprised they allowed you to stick around.”

“You know how the Ambassador is.”

“Too kind?”

He doesn't reply.

“Well, look at you." She grins. "Relying on the kindness of others.”

“How about you? What do you do?”

She seems to debate whether or not to hand him personal information, but eventually she munches out a reply, getting more and more confident as she speaks. “I'm a mechanic. Head mechanic. For a competitive pilot.”

“From Guren pilot to this?” he replies, then immediately regrets it. 

“Just because I was great with my Knightmare doesn’t mean I wanted to sit in it for the rest of my life. I treasure my time with the Guren" - she bites this out like an accusation, and maybe it's a jab at how insistently he used to try to change her mind. “But I’m allowed to want something else out of my life.”

“Absolutely,” he concedes, pliant. Apparently, though, his previous remark annoyed her enough that she still won’t relent. Her stare is more ferocious than sunlight.

“Do you miss the war, Suzaku?”

He jerks his head around, worried that someone might have heard. But the carriage is empty save for an old man reading the newspaper a few rows down and two teenagers sharing earbuds. Kallen looks unbothered by his bout of fear, and maybe it’s because she emerged from the war a winner or maybe it’s because she’s stronger than he’ll ever be. There is, however, a definite nervousness in the way she taps her finger arhythmically on the armrest. 

He glances at his own hands clenched on his lap and he’s mesmerized at the discovery that they’re the hands of an adult man, not those of the teenager who pulled triggers or the kid who wielded knives.

Does he miss it? It was so long ago. He’s not even sure he remembers it.

“I only ever wanted for it to end.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot.”

In the nameless woods behind the Kururugi shrine, Suzaku closes his eyes and breathes deeply. Where has time gone? He’s not sure he can remember Lelouch’s face anymore. He’s forgotten the way he looked when he last saw him - was he scared, had he already resigned to his fate? He remembers the smell of blood and gore that came from him alright. 

The more he tries to go back, the more the past slips away from his fingers. 

He wonders how Kallen feels.  _ He killed my friend, _ she said years ago. In spite of everything Lelouch was her friend, yet she came when Suzaku asked. He wonders if she’s also thinking of her brother as he crouches in front of Lelouch’s grave, wonders if grief melts together like clay until you forget who was the victim and who was the executioner, or if there ever was one at all. Lelouch hasn’t magically stopped being responsible for Euphy's death, and yet, and yet,  _ and yet. _

On the way back to the train station, Kallen proposes they get something to eat. He’s surprised at finding himself famished after the hike in the forest so he welcomes the idea, and they stop at a restaurant in town. The place is warm, the food tasty, and neither of them is in any rush to leave immediately after they’re done with their lunch.

The walls of the dining room are decorated with nature posters, old flyers and a set of watercolor paintings depicting the four seasons. A TV is on in the back of the room; the waiter is watching a talk show whose host Suzaku almost recognises. At the counter, two teenagers are eating and chatting about a math test.

Suzaku wonders if he was ever brought here as a kid. He supposes it’s possible, but he didn’t come to town often. He wouldn’t call his childhood  _ secluded, _ but he doesn’t recall having much contact with the outside world - when he saw other people, it was usually because they came to his house, rather than the opposite; and most of them were colleagues of his father, anyway.

The novelty of this situation makes him feel giddy, and it's such a foreign sensation that he almost doesn't recognize it.

"We were part of something bigger than us, weren't we?" Kallen says abruptly. "Something neither of us could explain."

"I guess we were."

She swats her hand in the air with a scoff, dissatisfied with his response. "Don't be vague, you know this better than I do. I know Lelouch told you stuff."

She's right, of course. She doesn't know a  _ quarter _ of it, but she's smart enough to wager a guess. And it doesn't surprise him that she's been ruminating on these thoughts, because the two of them were the ones who got the closest to Geass without ever really coming into contact with its secrets. She, through Zero; he, through Lelouch.

"It's funny," she adds - "that I was his right hand but he trusted his--his  _ enemy _ with things he would have never told me."

It's a bitter accusation that Suzaku can't dispute. But when he tries to apologize he discovers that once again he missed the mark of what she's really after. His words tear a smile out of her, a sad one but not a sour one.

"I know that there are things I'll never understand. You don't have to apologize for it. I've kind of pieced together that there was a separate war going on, one that I couldn't be a part of, but I know when to back down, so that's fine with me. I fought the battles that I chose to fight. Although I won't hide that it still hurts a little." She smiles, almost exasperated with herself - in the kind, compassionate way that only people who love themselves can be. "Even after all this time I still feel that  _ ache _ to be Zero's number one. It sounds impossible but it's true. But I don't mind that Lelouch confided in you. Not Zero, you know?  _ Lelouch." _

He thinks he gets what she means. She was friends with Lelouch, sure, but she was only devoted to Zero. He hated Zero, and they filled history channels with everything he did for his old friend.

Despite her serenity, he feels the need to reassure her. "He didn't tell me anything at first," he confessed. "Not while we were fighting on separate sides. I had to claw for every bit of information, although part of it I had already guessed. It was only toward the end that we realized we had a common enemy and he decided to trust me."

She hums.  _ "Trust.  _ I don't know if it's a matter of trust, really. Perhaps he didn't say anything, but I think he was always fighting a different war with you, one where he could never really accept you as your enemy."

Once again she's not wrong and he knows if, but the ramifications of her reflection escape him. There's a strange dissonance in talking about such gut-wrenching times on a warm day like this, in front of empty bowls of ramen, while Milly Ashford is interviewing some celebrity on TV.

"The way I see it," Kallen says, "you and he were a nation of two."

"A nation of two," he echoes as his mind tries to grasp the concept.

She circles the rim of her glass of water one, two, three times. Then she speaks “I don’t know if that’s a good thing, really. I mean, I'm not sure if whoever made up that concept thought of it as a good thing. But that’s how I see it. 

"Not long before the Second Battle of Tokyo, the Black Knight leaders discovered that Ohgi had been in a relationship with a Britannian soldier, Villetta Nu - I’m sure you knew her, she was a teacher at Ashford Academy. Ohgi and Villetta hadn’t seen each other for almost a year when she asked him to come and meet her alone. It was risky but he agreed. Without his knowledge, the other leaders had one of our agents follow him and try to kill her, but he saved her life. So they were both imprisoned. 

"You see, Ohgi’s loyalty to our cause never wavered, but that doesn't erase the fact that he was in love with her. The other leaders ended up taking him back, because the times were desperate and they couldn’t afford to lose someone who had been a beacon for the Knights since the very beginning, but they started treating him as an outcast after that, and they didn’t trust him again for a  _ very _ long time. I think it’s because they saw that even though Ohgi and Villetta fought on opposite sides of the war they had become a nation of two. They had isolated themselves from their respective factions and sworn loyalty to each other above all else, and nobody could tell who or what they were willing to sacrifice in order to save each other. 

"Luckily for them, it all ended well,” she adds with a lighter tone. “To this day I tease Ohgi about it - it was his first relationship ever since my brother died and he managed to make it crash and burn so disastrously before things actually got better.”

“I never knew,” he says meekly. If Ohgi and Villetta met shortly before the Second Battle of Tokyo, then their encounter took place around the same time he saw Lelouch at the Kururugi Shrine. Villetta was ambushed, and he never bothered to tell Lelouch that he never sold him out. 

He'd felt so stupid, then, thinking that they could fix it all on their own, but Lelouch always had a wilder imagination.

"Of course you didn't know," she replies, matter-of-factly. "Many of those who kept that secret are dead, now."

He nods, but he barely heard her. He'd like to reject the idea that he and Lelouch isolated themselves in such a nation of two, but Kallen has a point, because where did they stand, if not in the vacuum in the eye of the hurricane? The war would have ended sooner if Lelouch had let him die; it would have ended sooner if Suzaku had killed him when he had the chance.

Of course, had he done so, Kallen herself would have been executed less than a year later. Neither of them would be sitting here today in front of breadsticks and condiment and painted bowls, with Kallen's black-rimmed glasses folded on the table, next to a couple of teenagers laughing about a math test.

“But maybe I’m making this deeper than it needs to be,” Kallen says with a shrug, unaware of the turmoil in Suzaku's head. “After all, we were kids. Our war - it was a fucking children’s crusade. I can’t blame a kid for telling secrets to the boy he liked.”

"He didn't--"

"Oh, really, are we doing the whole denial game? Spare me, please, it's been fifteen years."

At loss of words, he rips open a packet of breadsticks and starts munching on one.

"And don't sulk, for fuck's sake," she says, rolling her eyes.

He's not sulking. He's not. But the mere notion that Lelouch would decide to let him in on his secret plan just because of a childhood crush is–

"Are you really that shocked?" she asks, leaning forward on the table and peering at him with a strange glint in her eyes as if for the first time today she were actually  _ intrigued _ by him. 

The sunlight filtering through the embroidered curtains turns her irises into molten ice, and he budges under her stare. Suddenly the bucolic decor of the restaurant, the bright chattering and warm light of the day hitting the tables in arabesque patterns make him feel dizzy. It's as if he were trapped in a world that should have never been his in the first place, all while peace remains beyond reach and the reason why he doesn't miss the war is that he  _ caused it,  _ and so he's got to keep living in it.

Is he  _ that _ shocked at this offhand declaration, made by someone who has no idea how much water actually passed under the bridge between him and Lelouch? Perhaps he is but in the same way that Lelouch used to surprise him: it always felt like a confirmation more than a discovery. But what's the point of calling it a  _ crush?  _ What did Lelouch know about childhood love, what did Suzaku? Innocence should be reserved for those who don't have blood on their hands.

"Why are we even talking about this? Like you said, it's been years."

"Yes, because we're past behaving like teenagers, but frankly it doesn't feel like it. There's a part of me that's still waiting for someone to scold me about missing homework. On the other hand, though, we would have never talked about this before."

"It's weird to be talking about it  _ now." _

"It is. It's not easy to remember that we're not those people anymore. Sometimes, when I wake up, I feel as though I'm living in a fairytale." She points at the paintings on the wall, punches the white tablecloth and lifts a corner before letting it drop. Beauty in the ordinary. All of this had been stripped away, during the war. "Not even a  _ dream,  _ you know? Not like it's all fake and I'm about to wake up. I feel as if I've been allowed to live in a whole other world for one day, and everything about it is real but it's not  _ mine _ and at the end of the day I'll have to go back."

It's how he feels, too. The world is perfectly alright, yet there's something deeply wrong with it. So that thing must be him. "It shouldn't be like this," he whispers. Not for  _ her, _ at least. She could strive for a happiness that is barred from him, and she should be able to do it freely without feeling the cold breath of her ghosts on the back of her neck. It's unfair that she's still haunted. It  _ was _ a children's crusade, and they were all betrayed and slaughtered by the hand that fed them.

"Suzaku, why did you want me to come here with you?" She changes the topic lightly, maybe understanding his reluctance at answering her previous questions, but there's a timidity in her voice that makes him wonder how long she's been waiting to ask this one.

"I've been giving a lot of thought to what I should do now that I'm not Zero anymore. And Nunnally, well, she wants me to lead a normal life again. So I thought I'd start by visiting a friend, and bring someone who… who was his friend, too." Someone who'd help him bear the loneliness, someone who'd remind him of the difference between the living and the dead. Lelouch left him again, and he's pathetically looking for scraps of him anywhere - if he can't find them inside himself anymore, he'll search for them in other people's hearts. 

"I see," she replies with a teasing smile. "You asked  _ me _ because you couldn't think of anyone else."

"No, that's not it! I know we didn't part on the best of terms, but you were Lelouch's sword as much as I was. That's got to count for something, right?"

"It does. It's the reason why I couldn't stand the sight of you before and also the reason why I'm still talking to you now."

He appreciates the candor. Maybe being both Japanese and Britannian forced her to embrace her own contradictions earlier than anyone else.

"So why  _ did you _ come?" he asks, still buzzing to discover how much of their friend still lives in her, and knowing that it is exactly because of those contradictions that she allowed him to occupy a place in her heart for all this time.

Her answer is surprisingly gentle. "Same reason you did, I suppose. I wanted to say hi."

They leave the restaurant soon after, and on the train home they talk about Kallen's new job, about the pros and cons of going to the gym on the weekend, about the spitfire that is Ohgi and Villetta's kid. They don't mention Lelouch again until they're in front of Kallen's house. 

Her hand hovers upon the garden gate after she's unlocked it. As she finally grips it to push it open, she says,

"I don't think he's dead."

"I killed him myself," Suzaku replies, quietly, as if anything spoken above a whisper were an offense to the bright blue sky. "I'm sorry, but he is."

She makes a frustrated noise, like he got everything wrong all over again.

"You don't have to  _ comfort _ me. I'm not saying this because I hope he'll come back to us or anything. I don't think he will. But… there were bigger forces at play than me and you will never understand, yeah? So, I think, he won't come back but he's not dead."

Nunnally's face was distorted with pain as she placed her brother's remains underground. They had to trespass private property in order to bury his ashes in a garden because no cemetery would have the Demon Emperor. But Lady Marianne the Flash hid in little Anya's body after being shot to death, and CC simply did not die, so Suzaku knows he'll never understand. Maybe Kallen is right and Lelouch is still roaming the earth, playing chess in Argentina or DJing at a nightclub in Russia or working as an archaeologist in Turkey. Maybe he has a good life and Suzaku will never see him again.

"Does believing that make you feel better?" he asks with genuine curiosity. There is a greed in his heart that he hasn't felt for a long time, one that says  _ it's not enough to believe, you want him again.  _ But maybe suppressing that greed will be worth the relief that comes with believing.

But. "No," Kallen says. "It doesn't make me feel  _ better.  _ Nor does it make me feel worse. I..." She shakes her head with a kind smile - apologetic, even, giving up on trying to explain that at the core of her belief is nothing but pure conviction. Giving up on  _ him.  _ "Forget I said that. For all intents and purposes, sure, he's dead. Listen… what was your name again?"

"Minami Akihiko."

"Listen, Minami, I'm glad we did all this, but we shouldn't see each other again. And you shouldn't go back to that place either."

"Why would you say this?"

"Because dead historical figures should stay dead, and you're Minami Akihiko now, so behave as such. However… if you find yourself in need of a mechanic and you happen to pass in front of a garage, I won't turn you away."

"I don't have a car," he blurts out before he's even realized what she just said. "But ah, thank you."

She grins. "I was serious, you know. I am glad we did this."

"I am, too," he murmurs, allowing himself to smile back. He'd never visited that place before, ever since he'd been there with Nunnally. For so long he was a dead person in a living body, but now, standing in front of an old friend, he allows himself the small pleasure of being glad that they did this. It's not much, but it's a beginning.

The clear autumn morning has turned into a warm afternoon, and after bidding goodbye to Kallen he takes a walk in her neighborhood instead of heading straight back to the train station. 

When he sees a couple of people waiting in line in front of an ice cream parlor whose turquoise sign cheerfully beams at him, he decides to queue after them just because he can. He takes off his jacket as he waits, ties it around his waist, and welcomes the tepid sun on his light cotton shirt. He's forgotten what kind of ice cream he used to like, but it's alright. He'll try again.

Inside the parlor, on a small table by the entrance, there are flyers for a concert in the park. He might just head there and check it out - make it a date with himself, even.  _ Sergei Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet",  _ the flyers say. He's not an expert, but it shouldn't be too bad.

He resumes his walk with a pistachio cone in one hand and a flyer in the other and tries to get a sense of his surroundings so he can find the park. It's a fun brand of worry, and it's a nice afternoon, and he's glad he saw Kallen and walked in the woods with her. Things could be much worse for Minami Akihiko.

The wind is getting chilly, but he doesn't mind the cold. He thinks of the thermal clothing he had to wear under Zero's suit for more than ten years and for the first time in his life that thought makes him smile. The falling leaves drift into the streets and all around him, and their dance makes him strangely eager to hear the concert. 

He's almost reached his destination when he stops at a relight. He dangles in the curb as he waits to cross, holding the flyer in front of his eyes to protect them from the light of the setting sun. 

A leaf falls right on top of his cone. He laughs. He takes it off, inspects the ice cream to make sure there's no residue, and gives it a lick - suddenly in a hurry to finish before something else falls onto it.

As he raises his head he notices a man with a saxophone perched on the other side of the pavement. He's also wrestling with a leaf - it got stuck in one of the instrument keys, no less, which makes Suzaku wonder why he's not carrying it in a case. The people piled up on the pavement next to him are watching him with light amusement. One of them–his stance, the cut of his face–that's all Suzaku can see, with the sun setting right before him, but it's enough to make his limbs gelid.

His pistachio ice cream suddenly feels like poison on his tongue - its taste foreign, sickeningly sweet, and utterly undeserved. This was not the pact.  _ It wasn't the pact.  _ Lelouch  _ died,  _ and Suzaku is here eating ice cream as if they didn't have a deal, as if he weren't meant to serve his sentence just as much as his friend did.

Not only is he failing at honoring his own end of the contract, but he's doing it miserably so: not fifteen years have passed that he's already going out with friends, taking road trips, enjoying walks. He's having lunch in countryside restaurants and going to concerts. Where did he forget his honor? He was meant to be a shell of a person. But no, all it took was Nunnally asking him to stop being a ghost and he just went and did all this, as if he weren't a murderer whose only hope in life is to die an excruciating, liberating death.

It was a children's crusade, yes, and he started it.

_ I don't think he's dead, _ Kallen said. The thought is unbearable. Had she not told him that, he might be able to swallow his fear and march on, but seeing that man on the other side of the pavement now fills him with something too heavy to bear. Because who can prove that Lelouch hasn't failed at honoring his end of the pact, too?

It would kill Suzaku once over to discover that the man is just a stranger; the opposite can't even be contemplated.

Above all, however, Suzaku feels disgusted with himself.

So he does the only thing he's been able to do ever since he killed his father - he turns on his heels and walks back to where he came from. He tossed the ice cream in the nearest bin.

It takes him a while but eventually he manages to find a balance. He keeps Nunnally happy and he keeps her safe as well, leads an ordinary life and also fulfills his oath. He doesn't even have to lie to her about it because she doesn't ask. 

The truth is this: he's neither dead nor alive. And blame it on his military training, on his years as a Knightmare devicer or on the fact that he doesn't give a damn about dying, but he quickly finds a new use for himself. Ghosts, as it turns out, are in pretty high demand.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to a really miserable day in suzaku's life
> 
> [the song that's playing (you'll know when)](https://open.spotify.com/track/4y243O2UcMeCWbyKIwDKkR?si=dMcwxAPxQzSObt--50Jb5A)

Kururugi Suzaku is taking a bus to his doom, but he doesn't know that yet.

At such an early hour, there are very few people riding along with him. He sits in the last row, back straight, wrapped in his parka, looking out of the window. It isn't yet dawn. Mist rises from the streets. So much for spring.

Suzaku is thirty-eight, he rents a one-bedroom apartment and he goes to the gym four times a week. Sometimes, at night, he watched Milly Ashford’s talk show. He works at the Britannian embassy, and he works for the Britannian secret services. The course of his life is not something he has to evaluate or improve. He will continue to eradicate one evil at a time until he's dead.

When he gets off the bus, he finds himself on an old secondary road. He’s meeting someone here, tomorrow morning, though he doesn’t know who exactly. This might be his only chance to get out of a stalemate he’s been in for quite some time, so he must be prepared. Although, truth be told, he’s so desperate for a breakthrough that he’d show up tomorrow no matter what his inspection reveals.

The bus stop appears to be harmless enough. It’s in a residential area, though there's also a souvenir shop in front of it. Inside the bus shelter there are two things only, a bench and an ad for a supermarket chain, on top of which someone has scribbled  _ HOT MILFS IN YOUR AREA _ plus a phone number. Right underneath, in a different calligraphy:  _ FUCK YOU MIROKU. _

Despite himself, Suzaku smiles.  _ Teenagers. _ He wonders if he would have turned out just like this, had there not been a war. He doubts it, but nonetheless feels a pang of nostalgia for the kind of carefree life he only ever glimpsed at during his year at Ashford, when he could still pretend that things were fine. 

In another life, does Lelouch print Suzaku’s number onto flyers and attach them to lampposts just to piss him off? Does Suzaku fail to protest because he’s laughing too hard? That  _ FUCK YOU MIROKU _ written in sharpie becomes a  _ FUCK YOU LELOUCH  _ delivered not with annoyance but with complicity. 

He traces his fingers on the wall just below the text, absentmindedly. Then he turns around and goes on by his inspection. He's gotten better at letting the past be the past, as of late.

Once he’s satisfied with his survey of the spot, he decides to take a walk around the area. The cerulean mist of the early morning hasn’t yet lifted and his attention is caught by the silhouette of a pedestrian bridge above the road. As he gets closer he's able to see things more clearly, and he discovers that it’s an old, narrow structure embedded between the buildings. Its metal steps are slippery, but Suzaku heads on anyway.

Right in the middle of the bridge, he takes a moment to look down at the city. The view is bleak, almost impalpable, but if one were to look closely it would be possible to glimpse at the greening trees, at the brightening of the morning sky, and the bristling life behind the windows as people begin to wake up. 

Suzaku will also have to get to work soon, so he resumes his walk. 

Stepping forward, he crosses paths with a man who’s going in the opposite direction, and he pays attention not to knock into him in the narrow passage. Then he begins descending the stairs to the other side of the bridge.

_ His cheeks are wet. _ He stops, mystified, to touch them - he's crying all of a sudden and he doesn't even know why. Things aren't so bad, are they? There's no reason to be crying. Yet, his pulsating eyes are filling up with tears.

Then the image of the other man’s face solidifies in his mind.

He turns around. The man has done the same.

They stare at each other.

Suzaku wipes away his tears.

It shouldn’t make sense, not as much as it does, but the shock on Lelouch’s face makes him feel calm in comparison. 

Were he any other type of man, he might start believing in ghosts. But he’s had enough experience to know three things: one, that those who die tend to stay dead and let the living mend their broken threads; two, that he never pretended to understand Geass; three, that if all the people whose lives were lost because of him decided to come back and haunt him, Lelouch would be last on the list.

As if that weren’t enough, it’s Lelouch who looks like he’s just seen a ghost.

It’s him. Surely, undoubtedly, it's him.

_ “Lelouch.” _ It’s barely a whisper. Just in case he’s wrong (he knows he’s not).

“Hello, Suzaku,” Lelouch replies.

It’s him.

After a moment of hesitation Lelouch walks up to him, but halts before he gets too close as if he just remembered who, exactly, is standing in front of him. After all, there’s no guarantee that Suzaku won’t punch him in the face.

“I should have known you’d stay in Tokyo,” Lelouch breathes out. The relief in his voice, the soft lines of his face - they're disarming. Suzaku feels faint.  _ What did he just say? _ Something about Tokyo, as if it made  _ sense _ to comment on Suzaku’s whereabouts first thing.

“I go where Nunnally goes,” Suzaku replies. Unable to think. His vision stretching thin. His answer is part of a preset which the man in front of him is indirectly responsible for presetting.

Lelouch. Lelouch is here. He’s wearing a dark gray coat and a purple scarf, and he’s peering at Suzaku with equal warmth despite the trail of stupefaction still present in his slight frown and shortness of breath.

As if time were split in two, their last moments together flash before Suzaku’s eyes like an old tape played forward and backward by manic fingers. He has no trouble remembering now - the  _ triumph _ in Lelouch’s eyes, the weight of the sword, Nunnally’s wail. That night, he slept with Zero’s mask on. Breathed it in, breathed it out. Lelouch had touched it as if he were trying to touch his face even though Suzaku had just killed him. 

He doesn’t realize that his hand is moving to touch Lelouch’s face in the same way until it’s too late. Lelouch closes his eyes as if he were expecting a punch, and maybe he’s right because it  _ is _ a fist that ends up being pressed against his cheekbone, which is funny as Suzaku only clenched his hand to soften the blow on his own heart, and if it’s a punch then it’s the gentlest one he’s ever dealt. 

It’s a strange affair, that of recognizing someone you haven’t seen since you were kids. Lelouch’s jaw is squarer and his nose looks straighter, but he still has that sort of dainty look, the same dignified upturn of his eyes, the same pointy chin. His hair is shaggier than it used to be and the dark shadow of yesterday’s beard around his jaw is scratching Suzaku’s knuckles, but his eyebrows are still carefully plucked and Suzaku has to fight the urge to run his fingers above them.

Lelouch opens his eyes with a terrified expression on his face as if he’d been punched for real. When his jaw clamps shut, Suzaku feels the muscle roll right under his pinkie and he moves his hand away. His pointless touch has earned him nothing except the painful awareness that the man in front of him has a beating heart even though Suzaku spread his ashes twenty years ago. He can’t bring himself to meet his eyes anymore. He doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to tell him, what kind of reaction would be acceptable, what the  _ fuck _ he should do.

“Suzaku,” Lelouch says, slowly, maybe sensing his panic. “This–it shouldn’t have happened, I…”

“That’s not my name anymore,” Suzaku manages to get out. He feels physically pained by the inadequacy of every single one of his responses, but if he doesn’t run on autopilot then he’s gonna end up doing something else he’ll regret. “Nunnally made me change it. When I went back to… to this.” He looks around, unsure as to what he went back to at all - this bridge, this road? What else is there? He can’t see anything past the fog.

“So what is your name?”

“Minami Akihiko. They even gave me a whole backstory in case somebody asked. It’s never–I’m not–I’m not.” What he means to say is that he’s not Suzaku anymore or at least he’s not supposed to be, and he’s not supposed to meet Lelouch on this bridge either, shouldn’t do or say or  _ think _ what Kururugi Suzaku would. “We shouldn’t fucking…  _ know _ each other, you’re not–shit.”

He takes a step back, overwhelmed. Lelouch puts his hands in his coat pockets and fixes his gaze somewhere past him, allowing him a sliver of privacy. 

_ “Shouldn’t,” _ he echoes. “Alright. Let’s not, then. Just… how is my sister?”

Despite the thousands of questions that threaten to spill out of him, Suzaku takes a deep breath and welcomes the change of topic, which allows him to scold his face into a neutral expression and get a grip on himself. He tells him that Nunnally is well, and in fact she will be getting married soon (can you believe? Little Nunnally getting married, but of course she’s not so little anymore, and–)

“Is she marrying for love?” Lelouch asks. He looks so pathetically concerned it’s almost funny.

“Very much, yes.”

“And you?”

“I’m not the one marrying her.”

“I know. But are you married?”

“Why would you ask me this.”

“Well–we were talking, and…”

_ We were talking, _ he says, as if they were two casual acquaintances who happened to run into each other.  _ How are you, how are the kids?  _ But after all that’s what they are, because how else would you call an old friend you haven’t seen in twenty years?  _ Yes, we were close as kids but the friendship turned sour in the end, what do you know, you grow up, high school, girl problems. I was happy to see him today, though.  _

Suzaku simply cannot stay here on this bridge and make chit-chat at six-thirty in the morning, so he states as much.

“We shouldn’t… I have to go to work.”

“Please don’t go yet,” Lelouch blurts out.

“Do you  _ want _ something from me?” he asks, helplessness verging on anguish. “Wait, did you know I’d be here today? Were you  _ following _ me?”

“No!” Lelouch sounds outright panicked, even though Suzaku’s accusations are baseless and borne out of defeat more than anything. His franticness sets Suzaku on edge: he doesn’t actually want to leave, he just doesn’t know what other options he has, and of the two of them at least Lelouch should know how to behave, and if he doesn’t then Suzaku is completely lost.

“What am I supposed to think?” he cries out, as his own desperation pressed for an argument over nothing. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t think there’s a script for this,” Lelouch murmurs. “I’m sorry. You can go if you want, I won’t keep you.”

What he wants is to make things normal. He’s got to get back on track and he’s got to do it  _ now. _

“Are  _ you _ married?”

“No, obviously!”

“See? It  _ was _ a stupid question.”

After a moment of confusion, Lelouch laughs.

“Alright, I have another question for Minami Akihiko. Would he be opposed to having a drink with me tonight? I’d like to hear his backstory.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Me neither. But would he?”

Suzaku was doing fine before this morning, could still do fine if he put all of this behind himself and pretended it never happened. He’s walking a line so thin that anything could break it, and this might very well be it. But it’s Lelouch. He’s actually here. And if Sisyphus…

He sighs. “Nunnally would be sad, wouldn’t she? If she found out that I saw you and walked away.”

“You’ve known her for longer than I have,” Lelouch concedes, giving him an easy way out in case he doesn’t actually want to fulfill this imaginary obligation toward her. 

It’s pointless, though.

Suzaku gives Lelouch the name of a bar where they can be. He schedules a time. They exchange phone numbers.

“Well, Suzaku, I hope I’ll see you tonight,” Lelouch says. 

It’s a goodbye - for now. Although Suzaku knows that they can’t stay on this bridge forever, and despite all his feigned craving to leave, just a minute ago, he feels slightly insulted by this clear dismissal. Lelouch was just like that when they were kids, a little prince through and through, always trying to decide what game they should play. Not that Suzaku ever let him boss him around, of course.

“My name is Akihiko,” he reminds him.

“Right, yeah. Akihiko. I envy you a little,  _ Akihiko. _ It doesn’t happen often that you click so  _ quickly _ with a stranger you met on your way back from work.”

Suzaku scoffs. “I’ll see you tonight.”

As he walks away - because the least he can do is walk away first - there is a voice in his heart that sings:  _ you stubborn fool, you’re alive. _

He gets nothing done at work that day, spends ten hours straight replaying those five minutes in his mind whether he’s in his office or in the canteen or on the train.  _ Lelouch, Suzaku, it shouldn’t have happened this way, that’s not my name, are you married? Were you following me, will you have a drink with me? Eight-thirty tonight, I hope I’ll see you there. _

In his small office that looks out to the embassy’s gardens, all he sees is Lelouch’s quick smiles. In the gym where he trains during lunch break, all he remembers are his wool scarf and the flush of his face when he felt embarrassed. On the train, commuting back to his apartment, he recalls that for some goddamn reason Lelouch smelled of fried rice. He feels dizzy. By eight-thirty, everything has begun to feel so surreal that he wonders whether they met at all.

There is only one reason why he shows up at the bar that night, and it’s Kallen. Years ago already she believed that Lelouch was alive. She beat Suzaku once, on the Damocles, so why not make it two?

He’s not surprised at all when he does, in fact, find Lelouch waiting for him. He’s peering with all the calmness in the world into a shop window that displays vintage typewriters. Suzaku wonders if he knows anything about typewriters or if he was simply attracted by those shiny little boxes and polished buttons illuminated by the lamplights, or maybe if he’s just looking at whatever’s there to pass the time while he waits for Suzaku to arrive. Then he wonders where he lives, if he had trouble finding this place. If he’s ever gone out with a stranger he met on his way back from work. 

That’s when he decides to stop wondering altogether and close the space that separates them, touching his shoulder to get his attention. Just like that day at the Kururugi shrine, seeing Lelouch there is nothing but a confirmation of everything he already knew about him. But he’s alive when Suzaku killed him, and he can’t help the way his hand flexes on his coat for a moment, grasping at his shoulder, making sure he’s really there.

Lelouch is so engrossed in his typewriters that he hasn’t heard him approach, and when Suzaku touches him he looks astonished for a moment, as if he didn’t expect him to actually show up.

“You’re here,” they both say at the same time.

Lelouch straightens his back and Suzaku’s hand falls.

“Did you think I wouldn’t come?”

“I–that is  _ so clearly _ not the issue.”

A quick smile appears on Lelouch’s face.  _ Touché.  _ The issue is being on this earth at all.

“Shall we go in?” He nods toward the bar, whose lighted sign cheerfully begs them to come. Suzaku hums in agreement.

So this is who Akihiko is: the kind of guy who agrees to have drinks with a stranger, the kind of guy who lets another man hold the door open for him, who gets a thrill from walking by him. He’s never gone out with anybody before, and look at him now.

A jazz piece he vaguely remembers from another life engulfs him as he enters the room. He opted for a piano bar hoping that the music would give them the chance to talk undisturbed, but he instantly regrets his choice as he takes in the wooden furniture, dark walls, and yellow lights: they remind him too much of the parties he used to attend when he was Knight of Seven. Undoubtedly Lelouch is relieving similar unpleasant memories.

When he looks back at him, however, he finds him smiling. Feeling heat rise under his collar, he presses on. And, as he takes a step further into the room, he begins to notice what Lelouch must have seen already: that despite the dramatic, baroque atmosphere, there’s a carefreeness in the room that the Britannian court never had; that the pianist looks like she’s actually having fun; that people look comfortable in their skin, and nobody’s afraid to laugh a little too loudly.

The place is bristling with so much life that Suzaku suddenly worries whether he should have booked a table, and he welcomes that mundane fear with open arms. So perfectly ordinary, to ask the waitress at the door if there are any seats available. He’s Minami Akihiko, on a night out with a good-looking stranger.

“Will other people be joining you tonight?” the waitress inquires as she checks her tablet.

“No, it’s just the two of us.”

“The two of you…?”

He looks back–but of course Lelouch is still there, where would he be?

“The two of us,” Lelouch confirms, and Suzaku breathes out a sigh of relief when the waitress exclaims,

“Right! The two of you, absolutely.” She sounds weirdly abashed and she shakes her head as if to cast away torpor, but she quickly points them toward a corner of the room where they should find a booth that just became available, and it all happens so fast that Suzaku doesn’t have the time to wonder what just happened.

They hang their jackets on the back of their chair, and Suzaku tries to ignore the way his heartbeat quickens when he sees how nicely Lelouch’s black shirt fits him.

He occupies himself with the menu, but can’t even make out the words written on it. He looks up, feeling Lelouch’s eyes on him, but Lelouch is watching the pianist. 

Suzaku would like to pretend that he really is Minami Akihiko, right then, having a drink with a stranger. But he knows he’s not. He has to force himself to unclench his jaw. He’s sweating through his clothes. He’s not good at pretending that they’re just strangers.

When a waiter comes to take their orders he asks for a soda and hopes it’s on the menu, because he hasn’t read a single thing.

“Very well. Thank you, sir.”

“How about you?” he asks Lelouch.

The waiter does a double-take when he looks at Lelouch, and for a moment Suzaku fears that he’ll start screaming that the Demon Emperor is in the room,  _ and isn’t he the White Death? _ But the guy quickly regains his composure, smiles politely, and waits for his order.

“I’ll have a soda too, please.”

“Thank you. I’ll be back in a moment with your drinks.”

Once he leaves, Suzaku asks,

“Do you get recognized often?”

“I–what? No, that’s not what it was.”

“What was it, then?”

Lelouch shakes his head with a smile. “Don’t worry about it. In fact… it’s you who promised me a life story.”

“First of all, I didn’t promise you anything,” Suzaku quips. Pointlessly antagonizing him is just what he needed to forget his tension.

“Semantics.”

“It is absolutely not a matter of semantics.”

“So are you not gonna tell me anything?”

_ “Fine,  _ what do you want to know?”

Lelouch shrugs. “Anything. I’d just like to know who’s sitting in front of me tonight.”

“Being a little less vague wouldn’t hurt you.”

“But isn’t that what people say,  _ tell me something about yourself?  _ I think they have a point. They’ll hear anything you feel like telling.”

He sounds so mellow. Suzaku feels queasy, not knowing how serious he actually is about this. He sighs.

“Whatever. I was born in Japan but left for Thailand with my mom when I was nine and my parents got divorced.” 

“No war of independence, then,” Lelouch notes. 

“No war for him, no. After the fall of the Empire, I moved to Britannia for a while, then back to Japan, and I worked odd jobs until I was hired by the Britannian Ambassador. I mostly handle some of the paperwork. Nothing crucial.”

There’s an odd intensity in Lelouch’s stare. His eyes have never left his face. Suzaku realizes that he’s waiting for more.

“That’s it,” he tells him.

Lelouch tilts his head. “No risqué details, then?”

His teasing is good-natured, but all it does is make Suzaku ache. He’s never been the jealous type but now he envies Akihiko, who would be able to take a joke without feeling as if he just walked through a beehive.

He glares at Lelouch.  _ “Risqué,  _ hah - no.”

“So, in summary, what makes Minami Akihiko a person is that he lived in a few places, did some jobs, and is a child of divorce.”

“He had a dog as a kid.”

Lelouch bursts into a laugh. He knows Suzaku likes cats.

It's unbearable.

“And I’m assuming you used your Geass to get yourself a fake life,” Suzaku hisses, trying to steer the conversation to other topics before he buckles under the weight of Lelouch’s attention.

“I got a fake ID if that’s what you mean, but I lost my… oh, thank you.” Lelouch leans back on his chair, making space for the waiter to maneuver the tray and place their drinks on the table, and Suzaku mirrors him. It takes forever. Coaster. Glass.  _ Thank you. _ Has Lelouch lost his powers? Coaster. Rotate it. Glass. He doesn't look vulnerable, but again, when did he ever? He never had a hair out of place. He’s shaved since this morning, too.

“You mentioned you were coming back from work when I met you earlier.”

“Ah, yes. I work the night shift as a cook. Been doing it for a few years now.”

“What did you do before?”

“I was a night guard at a museum.” He takes a sip of soda. There’s a twinkle in his eyes.

“A night guard at a museum. Like in the…”

“Like in the movie where dead things come back to life, yeah.”

Funny. Not funny at all.

“You lost your Geass.”

“I did.”

“How–”

“Excuse me,” someone says, and Suzaku almost barks at the intruder to let him finish one fucking sentence in what is possibly the most monumental evening of his life before he remembers that he’s in public and he’s got to be polite. “Sorry,” the guy continues. “Do you have a chair I can borrow?”

There are only two chairs at the table, both evidently occupied. 

“N-no?” Suzaku stutters, confused. He looks back at him. Is he drunk? He doesn’t look drunk. 

“Perhaps the waiter will be able to find you one,” Lelouch says.

The man reels back, aghast, a hand over his mouth. Then he bursts into a laugh. He says something about having drunk more than he thought, apologizes, laughs again. Lelouch’s smile stretches thin; he keeps stealing contrite glances at Suzaku, loosens the first button of his shirt, and chews on his own lip.

Once the man has gone bothering someone else he tries to reach for his glass, but trails off as soon as Suzaku puts a hand on his arm. Suzaku was wrong in thinking that he never looked vulnerable. He shied away from Lelouch’s attention before, but now he needs all of it, as much as it might pain him.

“Clearly something’s up.”

Lelouch sighs. “You have a gift for uncovering my ugly truths.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That, as usual, you catch me fully unprepared to explain.”

"You didn't exactly try to hide this from me," Suzaku says, cutting through his theatrics. 

A subdued smile. "No, I didn't. Quite the opposite, in fact, but that doesn't mean I'm ready for what comes next."

“At first I thought they were recognizing you. I thought, they  _ know _ who he is but then they go,  _ no, that's impossible, he can't be here,  _ so they laugh and forget about it. But most people only ever saw you on TV when you were a teenager. There's no way they're all recognizing you."

"Go on. You’re on the right track."

"The lady at the door, sure, maybe she didn’t realize that we’d come in together even though you were standing right behind me. The waiter might have been distracted. But this guy - he came up to two people sitting at a table with two chairs, and he asked me if one was free. And then he was shocked when you replied to him. As if he actually  _ had not seen you.” _

“Yeah. People tend to do that. Not see me.”

“But… you’re here.”  _ You’re not a ghost, _ is what he means to say. Suzaku is still touching his arm. And if there is a ghost among the people sitting at this table, it’s not Lelouch.

“I’m here,” Lelouch concurs. He puts his hand over Suzaku’s, whose heart does a somersault; but it’s only to gently pick it off his arm and place it on the table. He lingers for a moment, his fingertips chilly, his thumb pressing over Suzaku’s wrist bone. “It has taken me a long time to understand what’s been happening to me, and I still haven’t fully grasped at the whole thing, but I have formed this theory that people don’t see me unless something compels them to do so. Usually, speaking to them does the trick.”

“But the waiter…” 

“The waiter registered my presence because you asked me a question, and what would make more sense to his mind - noticing that someone else was sitting at the table, and scolding himself for being inattentive, or believing that a customer was talking to himself? It’s a matter of probability, I believe; of going down the road that makes you more comfortable.”

“This doesn’t make any sense. Either you’re alive or you’re… either you’re alive or you’re a ghost, you can’t be only halfway here, it doesn’t work that way, and you told me you lost your powers, so how come you haven’t gone back to normal?”

“I did lose my Geass. It’s a bit of a Dantesque law of retaliation, though, isn’t it? I used to be able to force people into anything as long as we made eye contact, and now I have to claw my way into their brains and I simply don’t exist in their peripheral attention.”

Suzaku lets out a shaky breath. It’s not like any of this is less believable than killing someone and having a drink with them twenty years later, but he still can’t wrap his mind about it. 

“Hold on - how come I saw you on the bridge this morning? I could have just…” What, exactly? He did keep walking - took at least four steps before he looked back. But that’s the point: he looked back.

Lelouch shakes his head. “I don’t know. As I said, I don’t understand it fully. The passage was narrow, so maybe you noticed me in order not to knock onto me. I don’t have an answer for that.”

“Typical,” Suzaku spits out, tense, before he can stop himself. He didn’t expect such sourness to spill out of him so suddenly, but he supposes it can’t be helped. Too much still boils under the surface, unresolved; mostly, he’s upset at Lelouch for knowing from the very beginning that this was never going to be a normal encounter. 

“I wish I did,” Lelouch murmurs as if he hadn’t even heard him. All this talk about struggling for attention but he won’t even lift his eyes from the table anymore. 

“You never had an answer for anything.” 

Lelouch doesn’t have an answer for this, either. He finishes his soda - Suzaku hasn’t even touched his - glances around, and then says, apropos of nothing, “I don’t know much about jazz, but the pianist seems to be having fun.”

It’s exactly what crossed Suzaku’s mind no more than half an hour ago. The depth of his own fondness for Lelouch enrages him.

“I was right before. I can’t do this.”

“I thought you might say that.”

“I can’t just sit here and talk about fucking  _ jazz _ with you.” He can’t pretend that they’re strangers nor can he pretend that they’re old friends meeting up for overdue small talk and discussing–what, live music, career plans, and a movie where dead things come back to life and the same thing happens to wax statues that were only ever a shell of real living people?

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“We spent three months in a golden palace twenty years ago,” Suzaku hisses, leaning forward on the table because there are things you just can’t say to a room full of people, no matter how hard the pianist is banging on her keys. “They can’t undo everything. What did you expect, that I’d welcome anything you’d spring on me as if we were best friends like when we were ten?”

The worst part is that even as he grabs his jacket and leaves he still wishes he could go back, say hi, and begin again. But he can’t. Out of self-preservation, he can’t. It’s too much.  _ That’s not my name, are you married? Will you have a drink with me? You promised me a life story, people don’t see me unless something compels them to do so. _ His head is spinning.

His whole life has been a cautionary tale, something to tell the children at bedtime: careful, if you don’t go to sleep you’ll end up a shell of a man at the outskirts of a fairytale. Your telltale heart will be the victim, the motive, and the scene of a crime, so you’d better remember your place in the world before it’s too late.  _ And what is my place in the world?  _ Your place in the world is in bed at nine, lights off.

Suzaku is already past saving, though, so instead of going home he heads to the nearest train station and takes a train to the embassy. He desperately craves for something familiar to ground him, and he can think of nothing more reassuring than the old, bratty office that his friend allowed him to keep.

He has no idea where to slot Lelouch’s reappearance into his life. He’s not used to facing problems he can’t solve. Even as a kid he always had a clear idea of what to do in order to repay for his crimes, and so he went on, steady, head high, secure in his convictions. Now everything feels wrong. He was doing so well, and now the whole balance has been thrown off and it’s all Lelouch’s fault. He’s got to get back to his bills and statistics and lazy signatures, to the dullness of ordinary life, back into the shoes of the paperwork man who doesn’t worry about a thing.

Work. Work. Work. Not a worry in the world.

Of course, the ugly truth has a way of uncovering itself.

At half-past eleven he hears a noise coming from the corridor. He doesn’t even bother keeping quiet as he goes outside to check its source, he can handle intruders. But he finds only one person in the long corridor that stretches into darkness.

“Nunnally! What are you doing here?”

She seems taken aback by his presence as much as he is by her own - her apartment is at the other end of the building and she’s in her nightgown. He wishes she hadn't found him like this, in such a telling combination of neat clothes and puffy eyes, from the sobs that burst out of him no more than half an hour ago.

“What are  _ you _ doing here so late?”

“I didn’t want to go home just yet,” he says, truthfully. “But what about you? It’s dangerous for you to wander around the offices when everyone has already left.”

“I couldn’t sleep.” Her tone is curt. She turns her wheelchair around with practiced movements, ready to dump him and his pointless worries as quickly as she found them.

“I’m sorry, Nunna.”

She sighs. “Actually, since you’re here, I do have a favor to ask.”

“Anything.”

“One of the paintings in my drawing room fell off while I was getting ready for bed. It gave me a fright. Will you come up and fix it before you leave?”

“I’ll come right now. Just let me grab my kit.”

When the embassy was his home, the drawing room was his least favorite place. Though it was in Nunnally’s private quarters, it was a space for her to entertain her least intimate guests, and it made him feel unsafe - filled his heart with fear of stumbling into a stranger while he wasn’t wearing Zero’s mask. He hasn’t been there in years, but he quickly discovers that he still doesn’t like it. It's pleasant enough, three sofas around a coffee table and big windows on the wall at his right, but it makes him nervous nonetheless.

She hands him the fallen frame, which displays an oil painting of a little girl placing a paper boat onto a pond. It’s too idyllic for Nunnally’s tastes and he wonders why she has it at all.

“Do you recognize the subject?” she asks, perhaps sensing his queries.

“Should I?”

“Maybe, since it’s me. My brother Clovis painted it.”

“Where did you find it?” He doesn’t remember seeing it when he still lived there.

“Cornelia did, a few years ago, while doing inventory in one of her mother’s estates after she passed. On the back, it says it’s me, so she passed it on to me.”

He studies it more attentively. Clovis was a skillful painter, but the little girl by the pond looks motionless, frozen in an era long gone. She could be a mythological figure - a nymph or one of those girls who turned into flowers, ethereal, nonexistent. 

“Something to drink?” Nunnally asks.

“No, thanks, I’ve had enough for tonight.” He didn’t even touch his soda but it still feels that he had enough.

He leaves the painting on the coffee table and gets down on all fours to search for the fallen nail, which has rolled under one of the sofas. In the meantime, Nunnally settles by one of the large windows with a glass of water from the carafe she keeps on a rolling tray for her guests.

The lights of the city are quite beautiful at night. Even from his position in the middle of the room, Suzaku can glimpse at the bright, colorful skyline. Maybe there’s a version of reality where Akihiko is enjoying his evening. But, of course, just like the nymphs and the flower girls, Akihiko never existed.

“You know,” Nunnally says, breaking their comfortable silence. “With the wedding coming up, I feel that I’m getting more and more pensive.”

“Are you having doubts?”

“Not at all. But as one chapter of my life comes to an end, I suppose I must draw the balance.”

He smiles. “That’s pretty romantic. Your perception of marriage as a life-changing event, I mean.”

He goes back to fixing the frame, feeling like a fraud for not telling her how much his own life has changed since the morning. But he knows he can’t just spit out the truth and pretend it won’t have consequences. For the time being, this is another secret he’ll have to bear alone.

"I suppose you've never thought about it," she says.

"What, marriage? Not really."

"Yeah, I guessed so."

And it really is true that he never did, not with Euphy, not with anyone else, not when his life was going right and certainly not after it capsized. It's good that Nunnally gets to have this, but his own life is going backward, not forward, and despite the thousands of stories that tell him it's impossible, he believes that if anyone can pull it off or die trying that's the kid who stopped a war when he was ten.

Once he’s done with the painting, Nunnally asks him to join her by the window. 

"Will you turn off the lights?" she adds, and he complies before he comes by her side.

"I hope you know that part of this happiness is because of you," she says without tearing her eyes away from the city.

"Happiness?"

"Yes. Freedom, beauty, however you want to name it. Going out with friends. Kissing someone on a Ferris wheel. Having a normal job. Everyone did their part in building the sort of world where those things are possible, including you."

She's right, but whatever part he might have played doesn't cancel out all the desperation he's responsible for. 

“Nunnally–”

“I had eight siblings,” she says, words spilling out of her as if held inside for too long. When he looks at her, he notices that she’s holding her glass of water so tightly that her knuckles have turned white. “Now I have two. Both of them have withdrawn from public life. I mean, the monarchy had to fall, there was no way Schneizel was going to be king, but he landed on his feet, didn’t he? Both he and Cornelia scurried away with their faithful husbands. Good for them. But I stayed. There were nine of us, and now it’s just me. I stayed and I put myself out there and worked my ass off, and if the world is the exact way it is today, that’s because of me. My father would have had a stroke if he'd known that, out of all of his children,  _ I  _ would turn out to be the most like him.” 

Her smile, though bitter, has a sort of triumphant quality to it - as if the satisfaction of giving him an imaginary stroke surpassed the disappointment of taking after him. 

“Lelouch got close, I think, but he never took any kind of initiative without getting lost in those feverish machinations of his. Me, though, I did what I had to do without much philosophizing, you know? And after the war people forgave me all of it. Worse, they treated me as if I never did anything wrong. They  _ praised _ me. Told me I’d been brave to take it upon myself to fire the FLEIJAs. It wasn’t bravery, that’s the whole point. What it was is… I was the only one who had the guts to admit that it wasn’t hard at all. I was  _ clicking a button.  _ You know how easy it is to kill someone you can’t even see.”

He nods. The Knightmares made it even easier, made you feel like you were above everybody else until your mind didn't even register the lives you were taking because all you saw were crashes and explosions, and everything felt so  _ distant  _ in the cocoon of the pilot's pit. 

"It was so easy, Suzaku, and nobody else seems to understand this,” she continues, distraught. “Everything always gets forgiven and forgotten, but sometimes I do things that are just… not right. I do things, and people suffer. Just like that time. And I have no intention of stopping taking risks and making hard decisions, that wouldn't be the right answer, but sometimes I wish that somebody would tell me to think twice about what I'm about to do, because it’s exhausting to be forgiven for everything and to never know whether you've actually done the right thing.”

“But Nunnally, you’ve done so much!” He whips around, and he touches her arm, unsure how to comfort her, unsure how to tell her that she shouldn’t worry about these things because she truly did her part in creating a world where people can be happy.

“Sure, I did so many things. But maybe I should have put more effort into them. Should have tried harder. And I’ll never know if there would have been a better path to take because nobody will ever tell me. I was allowed to choose to become a murderer at sixteen years old!  _ Sixteen! _ I am beloved for it! And after that, they kept allowing me anything. So maybe I’m the kind of person who has the guts to do what has to be done, alright, sure, but maybe everything would have turned out just fine even if I refused to fire those bombs. I don’t know! And it keeps me up at night. That the world may be better, if only I knew how to do better by it.”

“I think,” he replies, slowly - “that it’s not a matter of being good or bad. It’s not about being brave or having guts. All you can do… all you can do is offer your best. You are here, and you have to work with what you have, yeah? And... I think that if you weren’t doing everything you can, you would know without a doubt. And, Nunnally, you might not be sure if you’re doing your best, but I am. I can see how much care you put into everything you do.”

“Then maybe my best just isn’t good enough.”

“A good job is a good job,” he replies, stubborn. “All we can do is assess the situation and put our effort into maximizing it.”

“How simplistic,” she says.

He’s never been able to argue with her, has never been equipped to deal with her outbursts of sadness and self-doubt. There's no way to tell her that she may just be worrying too much, and that while it may weigh on her that she never had any guidance she's been splendid at doing anything she set her mind to.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asks instead, because may not be able to offer advice but she could tell him to swing from the Tokyo skyscrapers like Spiderman and he'd find a way to do it, if that made her feel better.

However, she shakes her head.

“Above all, I feel that I failed you," she says.

_ Oh, _ he thinks, in the peaceful moment before his own emotions catch up with him, and then his eyes fill with tears. He moves away from her, wishing he could jump into Clovis’s stupid idyllic painting. That way he could play with paper boats by that pond forever, and he'll never upset her ever again. 

“You didn’t. You didn't fail me. Why would you say that?”

“Because I found you in your office in the middle of the night and you told me you didn’t want to go home. You’re clearly not sleeping, you’re overworking yourself, you never stray from your schedule. I know I’m not around enough to know everything that goes on in your life, I can see that you’re dressed nicely tonight and you’ve styled your hair, which you  _ never _ do, so maybe this  _ is _ you trying. But every time I see you, you’re always so tense. It’s like you’re waiting for someone to stab you in the back. You sound exactly like my brother did when he was seventeen and he was convinced that we were going to be assassinated at every turn. Maybe I should have done something different with you, should have pushed you harder, I don’t know."

"You didn't–”

"Just let me finish, please, I can't stand the thought of going another day without telling you," she says, almost viciously, tearing through both their hearts the way you'd crack open an apple. "It breaks my heart that you’re not happy. I should have been a better friend to you. I don't know how to apologize for it but I'm begging you, Suzaku, please, don't forgive me for it just because you love me, you have every right to be angry that I subjected you to my every whim.”

“Please, no,” is all he manages to gasp before his throat closes up. She deserves to know that she’s been the best friend he could have ever asked for, but damn him, he can't even get it out. He doesn't have the words for it, can't even fathom how simple it would be to tell her so. “Please don’t say you failed me. I  _ am _ doing my best, I would only ever give you my best, so please don’t say it’s not enough.”

“I didn’t mean to–you're not at fault for this, I just meant–you always ask me if there's anything you can do for me but I hope you know that you can tell me if there is anything I can do for  _ you. _ Just please correct me, don't pretend it's all fine. If you’re not happy here...”

“I’d be happy to fix your frames at any time of the day, Nunnally, I promise.”

Fight knocked out of her by his empty but nonetheless well-meaning reassurances, she heaves out a sigh and runs her hands through her hair, brushing it back, then letting it fall. It's a worn-out gesture, which worries him, but when she speaks again it's only with familiar kindness.

“Just please talk to me, okay? If only Lelouch had talked to me, maybe things would have been different.”

“I will. I will.”

Except he can’t talk to her because he’s not just hiding Lelouch - he’s been hiding half of his life from her for the last seven years, and it would kill her to find out that he has tried and utterly failed to adapt to civilian life the way she wanted him to, just like he failed at being a masked paragon of justice. Zero Requiem was a foolproof plan and yet Suzaku proved that even foolproof plans can fail if one is inept enough. Lelouch should have killed him instead. 

"I think you should leave now," she says. She sounds exhausted. It would make her feel better if she left, so he does.

If Nunnally had chosen any other day but today to voice her worries, he would have added this newfound pain of hers atop of everyone else's and kept carrying it on his shoulders, seeking a way to unburden himself in one final blaze. Any other day but today. Fury mounts in the pit of his stomach as he leaves the embassy. Because he's not the sole man responsible for her pain, isn't he? And now he knows exactly where to find the other one.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> [art twitter](https://twitter.com/seuratto)


End file.
